I have first considered the tie between the mother and the child, because it is the most evident and the most necessary. But this relation is not the only one. The child, we have said, needs protection for a long time: does the mother's protection suffice? To judge from the way woman is constituted, one can see that she needs protection herself. Her weakness and her sex expose her to attacks; she is then but an insufficient protection to the feeble creature she is united to by so many ties. Therefore must the family have a protector; and who should be the natural protector of the child, if not the father? of the wife, if not the husband? The necessity of protection renders, then, man indispensable to the family. We may add to this, the necessity of subsistence. Undoubtedly the mother gives the child its first nourishment; but later on, the common means of subsistence must come from work. Now, without denying that woman is called to work the same as man, and whilst admitting that in the simple and natural state she is very much stronger than in the civilized state, it must, nevertheless, be admitted that woman, in general, is less fitted for work than man; that with more trouble, she produces less, and that a large portion of her life is necessarily taken up with her peculiar cares. Without the work of the head of the family, the common subsistence would, therefore, be imperiled. If we now consider the education of the children, it is beyond doubt that the maternal education is insufficient. The mother represents in the family, love, solicitude, serviceableness. In a solid education, authority should be added to these. It may be noticed that in children brought up by one of the parents only, there is in general something incomplete. Those who have had the father only, lack something in tenderness and delicacy of feeling which the graces of maternity insensibly communicate to the child; those who have had the mother only, are lacking in discipline and solidity of character: they are capricious and of a more passionate willfulness. Nature, then, appeals to the joint efforts of both father and mother in the education of the child. Let us add now that this close tie, which on one side attaches the child to the mother and on the other to the father, should also attach parents to each other, far beyond the first and transitory tie which first joined them. United in a common undertaking, namely, to support and educate the being they have brought into the world--it is impossible that they should not continue to be more and more closely united. =124. Family duties.=--This is the natural history of the family. It was probably in a similar manner, with many vicissitudes, that it gradually formed and then became transformed. Let us now see how out of this association, founded by instincts, interests, and circumstances, the principle of duty makes a sacred and indissoluble institution.